The present invention relates to bus adapter architectures which provide an interface between two different types of data communication buses.
Bus adapters function to bridge together two different types of data communication buses, such as a local bus used to communicate to devices within a single module and an external or system bus used to communicate to other modules in a system. Previous bus adapters included distributed control mechanisms by which each interface or major operation category included a separate control section. Unique interfaces between the multiple control sections implemented common resource allocation, operation prioritization, and deadlock recovery functions. Previous bus adapters selected the functions to be performed and resolved each uniquely on a case by case basis. Previous bus adapters lacked definition for combinations of functions and timing relationships between the multiple control sections and were thus difficult to simulate and validate. Consequently, previous bus adapters were prone to latent faults.